Sundance review: 'Zodiac Killer Project' scrutinizes the true-crime documentary genre, taking apart the genre's cliches and why the audience expects them

For his sake and ours, it’s a good thing director Charlie Shackleton didn’t get to make the movie he planned to make about the Zodiac Killer — because instead of making yet another true-crime documentary, he made an insightful dissection of the genre with his “Zodiac Killer Project.”

Shackleton — who is the movie’s director, editor and narrator — explains that he had been working on a movie about the infamous California serial killer of the 1970s, based on a memoir by Lyndon Lafferty, a former California Highway Patrol officer who said he spotted someone he thought was a likely suspect in the five known homicide cases. Shackleton had already started pre-production work when he got an email informing him that Lafferty’s family had declined to sell the film rights to the memoir.

The film opens with a long camera pan across a rest stop off of a California freeway. The camera stops at an empty parking space, and Shackleton narrates the opening shot he was planning to do — showing a CHP police cruiser parked in that same spot, seeing a car pulling up alongside. Shackleton describes how Lafferty, in the cruiser, makes eye contact with the driver of the other car, who resembles the familiar police sketch of the suspected Zodiac Killer.

Shackleton repeats this trick throughout the film (and it is film — the pan shots employ 16mm stock), showing us the general idea of the kind of scene he intended to film. Those shots, he says in the narration, would have been recreations of key moments Lafferty wrote about. Usually, the locations are simulated, too; he often mentions that the house or church he’s filming are the real locations of the events Lafferty’s book mentions. (Shackleton also quotes just enough of the book to stay on the legal side of the “fair use” defense. He also gleans enough of what’s in Lafferty’s book from outside sources to cover a fair amount of it without violating copyright.)

These scenes that never were, Shackleton tells us, each fit neatly into the formula of true-crime documentaries — from the enigmatic credits through the scene-setting of the small town with a dark secret. To demonstrate, Shackleton compiles montages of other true-crime shows from HBO and Netflix that use those same techniques.

With “Zodiac Killer Project,” Shackleton’s failed attempt at joining the true-crime pantheon — one that sounds pretty average, based on his description — instead takes apart the cliches of the genre, and the audience’s expectations behind each of them.

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‘Zodiac Killer Project’

★★★1/2

Screening in the Next program of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. No more in-person screenings are scheduled. Online screenings available through Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. Mountain time. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for mature themes involving a serial killer. Running time: 92 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Sorry, Baby' is an empathetic look at a woman trying to get unstuck after tragedy, and a triumph for director/writer/star Eva Victor

Alternately sad, scary and awkwardly funny, writer-director-star Eva Victor’s debut feature, “Sorry, Baby,” is a sneakily moving story of a woman stuck in place and trying to move — move on, move forward, move somewhere — after a bad thing happens to her.

Victor is very clear what the bad thing is, though she does not dramatize the bad thing. Victor tells her story in chapters, and the second chapter is called “The Year with the Bad Thing,” and she doesn’t leave any doubt what the bad thing is.

In the first chapter, called “The Year with the Baby,” we meet Victor’s character, Agnes, a literature professor at a small New England college. Her best friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie), has driven up from New York for a visit — staying at Agnes’ house, which is the same house they shared when they both attended this college. Agnes is the youngest full-time professor the college’s English department has ever had, a fact often cited by Natasha (Kelly McCormack), an adjunct professor and former classmate who jealously comments that everything has come easy to Agnes.

Lydie also meets Agnes’ neighbor, Gavin (Lucas Hedges), a handsome and slightly perplexed man — and, Lydie suspects, someone with whom Agnes has had sex. Since Lydie knows about the bad thing that happened to Agnes four years earlier, the possibility that Agnes has an occasional friend with benefits down the road is a positive.

Then comes that second chapter, “The Year with the Bad Thing,” set when Agnes and Lydie are grad students, finishing their respective literary theses to turn in to their professor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi). Natasha’s in the class, too, and annoys Agnes by suggesting that Agnes is the professor’s favorite. Then there’s the Bad Thing. 

The rest of Victor’s sharply observant and warmly empathetic movie focuses on the ways Agnes is trying to exist in the wake of the Bad Thing. She tries to write. She carries on at school. She considers doing some damage, either to herself or to something else. She finds a stray kitten in the street and tells Lydie that they’re keeping it.

Every second Victor lets us spend with Agnes is perfect. Victor finds quiet, precise moments that show us Agnes’ bruised psyche, with hints of humor that show us her resilience to avoid falling into an abyss of her darker thoughts. Victor doesn’t underline her points, and doesn’t have to — she understands Agnes intuitively, and projects that feeling to the audience so we understand her without having to have her emotions broadcast to us.

As an actor, Victor balances Agnes’ hesitant humor with a deep reservoir of pain, finding a middle space where she’s working through her life to find a way to get out of her rut. Victor may be the most empathetic filmmaker to come through the Sundance Film Festival since Miranda July, and she shows in “Sorry, Baby” that she’s got a lot to show the world.

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‘Sorry, Baby’

★★★★

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Thursday, January 30, 9 p.m., The Ray, Park City; Friday, January 31, 2:30 p.m., Library; Park City; Saturday, February 1, 11:30 a.m., Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for sexuality, descriptions of sexual violence, and language. Running time: 102 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Didn't Die' delivers shocks and a few chuckles, in a zombie movie for the digital age

Director Meera Menon’s “Didn’t Die” is like a “Night of the Living Dead” for the digital age, a zombie movie that also delivers some acerbic commentary about our difficulties connecting without technology.

Vinita (played by Kiran Deol) hosts a podcast, called “Didn’t Die,” in which she dispenses advice, wisdom and jokes about surviving the zombie apocalypse that has overrun the land. Vinita and her younger brother, Rish (Vishal Vijayakumar), have returned to their hometown to do a live broadcast, for as many humans who are willing to come out of hiding to be in the audience. That proves to be difficult, as the undead — called “biters,” for obvious reasons — seem to be evolving, both moving faster and no longer only walking at night. 

Vinita and Rish are staying with their oldest brother, Hari (Samrat Chakrabarti) and his wife, Barbara (Katie McCuen), whose post-apocalyptic hobby is bedazzling her weapons. They’re staying in their parents’ house, and don’t about what happened to them.

At the podcast show, in the town’s old courthouse, Vinita is surprised when her ex, Vincent (George Basil), shows up. She’s even more surprised by what he’s carrying: A baby, who was left for dead when her parents were consumed by the “biters” in the movie’s prologue. They all go back to the house, and have some serious discussions about whether they can shelter a baby in an increasingly terrifying world. 

Menon (whose financial thriller “Equity” played Sundance in 2016) and her co-writer Paul Gleason — who’s also the cinematographer and Menon’s husband — shot the movie, mostly, in black-and-white, so the parallel’s to George Romero’s classic are clear. This is a simple story of survival, of a family holing up in a house and hoping against hope that the monsters stay outside.

Vinita’s podcast musings — about, for example, the dwindling opportunities for sex during a zombie pandemic — act as an amusing running commentary. Zombies, throughout movie history, have served as a stand-in for “the other,” whether it’s disease or conformity or materialism, and Menon and Gleason here use them to muse on the lack of connection in our technological world.

The other thing about good zombie movies is that you can dismiss the subtext and just enjoy the running and chasing and dodging zombies. Menon delivers on that score in “Didn’t Die,” serving up a brooding tension and a brisk action pace.

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‘Didn’t Die’

★★★1/2

Screening in the Midnight program of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Wednesday, January 29, 8:10 p.m., Redstone 2, Park City; Saturday, February 1, 8:50 p.m., Redstone 3, Park City; Sunday, February 2, 9:30 p.m., Broadway 6, Salt Lake City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for violence, language and some sexual content. Running time: 93 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Life After' probes an '80s plea for medically assisted death, and opens up the complicated history of the issue

In two documentaries — his 2022 film “I Didn’t See You There” and now with “Life After” — director Reid Davenport proves he’s quite adept at making viewers look at the world through a different perspective, as seen from his wheelchair.

“Life After” starts with the story of Elizabeth Bouvia, a California woman who in 1983 — at age 26 — went to court to gain the right to decide when she could die, with the help of medical professionals. Bouvia had cerebral palsy (as Davenport does), and argued that the pain she was experiencing because of her condition made her life unbearable, and she wanted to right to choose when to end that life.

It’s not a spoiler to say that Bouvia lost that court case. What’s more fascinating is what Davenport learns next — that there is very little record of what happened to Bouvia after that landmark case. At his computer, talking to his producer, Colleen Cassingham, Davenport asks a provocative question: What if Bouvia, who would be in her 60s, was still alive?

The mystery of Boulia’s case opens up a whole line of questioning for Davenport, about the nature of so-called “medically assisted death” policies, where the practice is legal and what they say about the society that allows them.

I will admit that, in my ableist liberal way, I had not thought much about this subject — and if I had, I’d say I was generally supportive of the idea that a person gets to make their own choices about their medical care, including the right to decide to stop getting any. But Davenport’s movie makes a persuasive argument that such a right is only fair if the person offered that right has a real alternative. 

Davenport takes the example of Canada, which has had “medical assistance in dying” or MAiD on the books since 2016. At first, the law only applied to people for whom death was foreseeable in the near term. In 2021, though, Canada’s Parliament amended the law, to include people who had “grievous and irremediable” illness, even if that illness would not be likely to bring death reasonably soon. (In fairness to Parliament, a couple of provincial supreme courts ruled in 2019 that MAiD could not be limited to people on the verge of dying.)

Davenport notes in the film that Canada’s rates of allowing MAiD have risen sharply in recent years. He also presents the counter-argument that in that same period of time, the amount of money Canada’s national and provincial governments spend on care for disabled people — the sort to care that would make living with a disability more tolerable — has not gone up. In other words, Davenport argues, MAiD has become an insurance executive’s dream: A treatment that’s cheaper than home care, and only needs to be paid for once.

Davenport presents his case as any good documentarian would, with well-marshaled facts sprinkled with anecdotes of people who embody the issue at hand. The most sustained anecdote is Bouvia’s, told by her family and through her own writings. Davenport gives Bouvia’s story the space and respect it deserves, as it depicts her as a pioneer of a particular human right that none of us want to exercise unless we have to.

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‘Life After’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Tuesday, January 28, 9:40 a.m., Redstone 2, Park City; Thursday, January 30, 12:30 p.m., Broadway 6, Salt Lake City; Friday, January 31, 6 p.m., Holiday 1, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language and thematic material involving suicide. Running time: 100 minutes.

Sundance review: 'The Virgin of the Quarry Lake' follows a teen girl's jealous obsession in a moody Argentine drama.

Young love takes some dark turns — some of them more predictable than others — in director Laura Casabé’s drama “The Virgin of the Quarry Lake.”

In a Buenos Aires suburb in 2001, Natalia (Dolores Oiverio) is looking forward to her last summer before college — and of hanging out with her friends, and with the boy she’s been crushing on, Diego (Agustín Sosa). That hope gets derailed with the arrival of Silvia (Fernanda Echevarria), a college-aged woman Diego met in a chat room. 

Silvia is sophisticated, talking about her recent stay in London, or her cousin in Mexico, or knowing the bass player for the band Natalia and Diego like. She gets them into a hip nightclub, and tells them about this cool place to go swimming — a pristine lake formed by an abandoned quarry a few miles away. It becomes their summer hangout spot, as Natalia watches with envy as Diego seems to be getting closer to Silvia.

Casabé and screenwriter Benjamin Naishtat, adapting a short story by Argentine author Mariana Enriquez, capture the pangs of young love, as Natalia wrestles with whether to show her feelings for Diego. She also has to contend with her grandmother (Luisa Merelas), who dabbles in magic and may have passed the talent to her granddaughter.

Some of the territory covered here is familiar stuff in teen romance stories. What’s unique, and most interesting, about “The Virgin of the Quarry Lake,” is the specificity Casabé brings to Natalia’s jealousy — and Oliverio’s breakout performance.

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‘The Virgin of the Quarry Lake’

★★★

Screening in the World Cinema Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Tuesday, January 28, 3:15 p.m., Broadway 6, Salt Lake City; Wednesday, January 29, 2:30 p.m., Redstone 4, Park City; Friday, January 31, 5:20 p.m., Redstone 3, Park City; Saturday, February 1, 6:45 p.m., Holiday 2, Park City.  Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for strong sexuality, language and some bloodshed. Running time: 96 minutes; in Spanish, with subtitles.

Sundance review: 'Bunnylovr' has some rough bits, but it's a strong statement of a drama for writer-director-star Katarina Zhu

A couple years from now, you’re likely to hear about some new movie by a talented filmmaker and actor named Katarina Zhu — and the well-constructed drama “Bunnylovr” is the calling card that will get Zhu that movie.

Zhu plays Rebecca, a New Yorker with an unexciting day job as some rich guy’s personal assistant and a more exciting side gig: As a cam girl, streaming herself on a porn website, taking requests for actions from viewers in the chat room — for tips, of course. It’s a world that’s both intimate and anonymous, with Rebecca and her viewers all identified by their screen handles.

As Rebecca tries to maintain this double life, other things threaten to disrupt that balance. She’s still obsessed with her ex, Carter (Jack Kilmer), as her artist best friend Bella (Rachel Sennott) is working to set her up with someone new and nice. In Chinatown, Rebecca runs into her estranged father, William (Perry Yung), who wants her help with an old scam — standing behind William’s opposition in a card game, feeding William information on his opponents’ cards via hand signals.

The strangest wrinkle of all comes from one determined fan on Rebecca’s streaming account. He pays handsomely for private chats, then offers her a mysterious gift — which turns out to be a live rabbit, which Rebecca is reluctant to keep. What follows is a struggle for control of this situation, with the client seemingly in command — because he is in charge of something Rebecca wants: Access to his webcam, to get a look at who’s given her a rabbit.

Zhu as a director has a sharp eye for telling details, particularly in the transactional mechanics of Rebecca’s porn gig. Her script as serviceable for a first-timer, if a little thin. Her performance, trying to keep all the plates in her life spinning, is eye-opening, the sort of new talent the Sundance Film Festival is designed to showcase.

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‘Bunnylovr’

★★★

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Monday, January 27, noon, Broadway 3, Salt Lake City; Thursday, January 30, 5:20 p.m., Redstone 3, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for strong sexuality, language and suggestions of violence. Running time: 86 minutes. 

Sundance review: 'Plainclothes' is a thoughtful, tragic drama of two men unable to express their gay identity in the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' era

Though it’s set in 1997, the themes about gay identity and secret shame in writer-director Carmen Emmi’s drama “Plainclothes” are still fresh and vital — especially when handled as sharply as this movie does.

Lucas, played by Tom Blyth (“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”), works undercover in an upstate New York police department, with the specialty of nabbing men seeking to solicit sex from young men in public places. 

Emmi shows us the set-up early: Lucas, looking like a hot young prospect, makes eye contact with a likely target in the mall. The target follows Lucas into the men’s room, where he silently indicates that the target go into the toilet stall. When the target starts unbuckling his pants, Lucas leaves — and when the target also leaves, that’s where Lucas’ sergeant (Christian Cooke), who’s been operating the hidden camera behind the paper-towel dispenser, makes the arrest. 

Lucas is tiring of this duty, and his superiors are working to train a rookie officer (Darius Fraser) to take his place. Part of the reason is that Lucas himself is feeling attracted to men — something he’s only told to his now-former girlfriend, Emily (Amy Forsyth). Lucas fears coming out would disappoint her mother (Maria Dizzia), and would incur the wrath of his homophobic uncle, Paul (Gabe Fazio).

When Lucas is working his undercover sting in the mall one day, he makes contact with an older man (Russell Tovey). Lucas notices that this man, who identifies himself as Andrew, seems to know how to avoid the behavior that will bring about an arrest. Lucas also notices that he’s very attracted to him, and they manage to arrange to meet again.

Emmi, a cinematographer making his directing debut, deploys some clever tricks to build up Lucas’ stress as he fears he’ll be found out. Most effectively, Emmi cuts in grainy, VHS-grade footage that emulates the videos of the sting operation and augments Lucas’ paranoia.

The deciding factor in “Plainclothes” are the nicely complementary lead performances by Blyth and Tovey. The performers sensitively portray different ends of the gay experience, circa 1997— the young man just discovering his sexual preferences, and the older and wiser man who knows the routine he has to follow to separate his sexuality from his public identity.

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‘Plainclothes’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Tuesday, January 28, 4 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City; Friday, January 31, 2:30 p.m., Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City; Saturday, February 1, 12:45 p.m., Holiday 1, Park City. Sunday, February 2, 9 p.m., The Ray, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for strong sexuality, language and some violence. Running time: 95 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Third Act' is a love letter from a son to his father, and the filmmaking passion that's their family legacy

Director Tadashi Nakamura’s heartwarming documentary “Third Act” is a tribute to an unsung movie legend, an examination of a shameful period in American history, and a son’s love letter to his father.

Nakamura’s father, Robert A. Nakamura, is referred to as “the godfather of Asian American cinema.” He’s made a couple dozen movies, with one of them — a documentary, “Manzanar,” about the internment camp in California where his family was held during World War II — is in the National Film Registry. He also taught film at UCLA for many years, and inspired generations of film students. 

That’s what Tadashi wanted to cover in his film, until real life intervened. A year into shooting, Bob (as everyone calls him), was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, at age 82. So Tadashi’s focus shifted to trying to connect with his dad, both for himself and for Tadashi’s own son to know more about his grandpa.

The film also allows the generations to learn about Bob’s father, who built up a business only to have it taken away when the U.S. government sent thousands of Japanese Americans to camps for no reason other than the color of their skin. After the war, Bob’s dad went back to being a gardener — for which Bob admitted shame, something he later (and to this day) regretted.

Tadashi Nakamura talks glowingly about how he resisted following in his father’s footsteps — he played football in high school to avoid the nerdy Asian stereotypes, and says he took Bob’s filmmaking course at UCLA because at first he thought it would be an easy A. But as he fell in love with filmmaking, he says he understood better why his dad was so devoted to it. 

And, in return, Bob said he was proud of his son’s work — and agreed to appear in this movie, at first, as a way to help Tadashi’s career.

Through thoughtful interviews — often interrupted by Bob’s ailing days — and footage of trips to Manzanar and Hawaii (the Nakamura family’s favorite vacation place), “Third Act” tracks the evolution of a father-son relationship, and the love that’s the through line across the years. 

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‘Third Act’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Monday, January 27, 5:20 p.m., Redstone 3, Park City; Thursday, January 30, Broadway 3, Salt Lake City; Friday, January 31, 5:45 p.m., Egyptian, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably PG-13 for some language and racist epithets. Running time: 93 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Sunfish' is an engaging quartet of stories, all set on a lake in an idyllic summer

It’s a cliche to say that the location in a movie is like another character — but in the case of writer-director Sierra Falconer’s observant anthology “Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake),” the lake mentioned in the title isn’t just a character, but the only character who appears from start to finish.

Falconer tells four engaging stories, all set in the summer around a lake in Michigan. If there’s a common thread besides that, it’s that each focuses on a relationship at a critical point.

• First, there’s Lu (Maren Heary), a 14-year-old girl left with her grandparents (Marceline Hugot and Adam LaFevre) when her mom (Lauren Sweetser) impulsively gets married and abandons her daughter for an impromptu honeymoon. While exploring by the lake, she finds Grandpa’s single-person sailboat, a Sunfish, and Grandpa shows her how to sail. (Grandpa’s best line: “When you capsize, and you will capsize, …”) 

• At a summer music camp, Interlochen, Jun (Jim Kaplan) is a 12-year-old violin prodigy who’s driven — or, rather, pushed by his mom — to make first chair in the camp’s orchestra.

• Annie (Karsen Liotta, Ray’s daughter), a bartender pulling a double shift, offers to give a ride to Finn (Dominic Bogart), who’s sure he can find a monster fish at the bottom of the lake. Misadventures happen on the way to the lake.

• Sisters Robin (Emily Hall) and Blue Jay (Tenley Kellogg) run their family’s B&B, cooking and cleaning for the rich family who vacations there. It’s the last time they’ll do this together, as Robin is preparing to leave for culinary school.

Falconer gives the right weight to each of the four stories, so none of them feel truncated or like they’ve overstayed their welcome. She has gathered a solid ensemble cast, with a mix of fresh faces and veteran character actors (like LeFevre, or Wayne Duvall as one of Annie’s more obnoxious customers). 

The vibe of “Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake)” is an adventure-filled summer at the lake — one you’ll remember for many summers to come.

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‘Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake)’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Monday, January 27, 2:30 p.m., Redstone 4, Park City; Thursday, January 30, noon, Egyptian, Park City; Friday, January 31, 12;30 p.m., Broadway 6, Salt Lake City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for language. Running time: 87 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Bubble & Squeak' is subdued absurdism, with cabbages, that works pretty well

There’s a strong core of deadpan absurdism in writer-director Evan Twohy’s debut feature, “Bubble & Squeak,” that generates a fair share of laughs in this offbeat lovers-on-the-run story.

Declan (Hamish Patel) and Delores (Sarah Goldberg) are on their honeymoon, visiting an unnamed Central European country. (The movie was filmed in Estonia.) As the movie starts, they are being held in Customs, because, as their customs officer (Steven Yeun) tells them, there was a report that some American tourists were smuggling cabbages into the country.

It’s quickly explained that the country was recently in a war, and the people had to eat nothing but cabbages to survive — and they grew to hate the taste of cabbages so much that they banned the vegetable.

Declan and Delores claim to know nothing about contraband cabbages. The officer says they can sign a confession and admit knowledge of the smuggling, and only face a small penalty — which turns out to be a massive fine and the choice of which of them should be executed. This is preferable, the couple is told, than facing the country’s chief of security, Shazbor (played by Matt Berry), who instead would cut off their fingertips and beat them with a rusty baseball batt.

Declan — who ignores the cabbage-sized bulges in Delores’ slacks, which he says are caused by tumors in his bride’s legs — urges Delores to escape from their Customs office holding room, then try to get to the border. They break free, only to have Shazbor and his police recruits pursuing the couple through the forest. The couple also encounters a series of progressively lethal traps, and a professional cabbage smuggler (Dave Franco) who disguises himself as a bear. 

Twohy has instructed his cast to speak with as little affect as possible, and presenting this bizarre cabbage ban as matter-of-factly as possible makes it even more weirdly comical. The hindrance brought by making every actor speak in a deliberately flat tone is that it denies one of Berry’s greatest gifts: His pompous booming voice. (For an example, watch him in “What We Do in the Shadows.”) Berry makes up for this with the equally odd choice of giving Shazbor a voice similar to that of the German director Werner Herzog.

There’s a poignant, if a bit overlong, scene toward the end that starts at explaining the source of Delores’ obsession. Otherwise, that deadpan tone remains consistent, producing more laughter than anything about cabbages likely has ever inspired.

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‘Bubble & Squeak’ 

★★★

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Sunday, January 26, 9 p.m., Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City; Wednesday, January 29, 6 p.m., Egyptian, Park City; Friday, January 31, 6:15 p.m., The Ray, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language and suggestions of violence. Running time: 97 minutes.